Drops of Jupiter
by Pandastacia
Summary: And tell me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find? And then you missed me while you were looking for yourself out there?


_For Sara__  
Prompts: sugar & spice / moonlight on water / cold toes / steam off a cup of tea  
Notes: Writing it in present tense & using no names is a new style for me, so I'd appreciate opinions? & it is currently just ItaSaku!friendship. Even if I'm a complete shipper of it…  
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or anything affiliated with it.  
Enjoy! I appreciate reviews. ;)_

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Call her strange, but she has always liked the pool best in the middle of fall.

Autumn happens after the heat of summer has burned itself out, the trees filling the air with falling leaves that look like miniature flames being spit from the sky itself.

It is the epitome of change and change can only be an improvement.

Her favorite part of her job is the keys. Lifeguarding is her revenue- during the summer days, she sits in that tall white station in the ugly red suit with a white cross and her sunglasses, keeping kids safe in the summer heat.

But that time is done, so she uses those keys to get on the pool deck when no one else is interested on late nights when all that is left of kids screaming and shouting is the shifting of the only leaves left.

She gulps down the rest of her tea. The somewhat acrid taste has stopped bothering her; it has become the norm in an imperfect world with a tendency towards cooling peppermint.

"Do you want more?"

She jerks slightly. She had forgotten about him- _his_ brother, _his_ mistakes, _his_ troubles.

Mumbling a yes, she hides her face between the sugar-spun clouds of hair falling around her face as he pours more peppermint tea into her mug.

Mostly, she cannot believe she forgot that she was not the only one mourning _his_ departure. The way the space he used to occupy was emptier than the packages of ramen in Naruto's apartment, something that made the space in her chest ache.

She tries to remember what it was like to care about anything.

When she had been younger, she had been obsessed. She _had_ to know _his_ favorite food, _had_ to know _his_ favorite class, _had_ to know that he cared about anything. She knew where _he_ lived, _his_ relationships with _his_ family and just about everyone else, how _he_ loved his brother like nothing- or no one- else.

It had been a kind of love.

But now it is an obsession eating away at purity like a poison in her system. It had degraded from love into an unacknowledged-hate-obsession with a life of its own.

It has taken over her life.

The nights are like a constant wake at a watery funeral- she doesn't sleep, doesn't eat. She drinks her tea until everything is drowning it and her mind _flows_.

"Where do you think he is?" she whispers, staring at him but not seeing him.

He takes a sip of his own tea and cocks his head to the side. She knows he always looks at her for the same reason she always stares at him. They are two parts of the life _he_ left behind. There are other parts, but they are trying to forget, losing themselves in substances that are dry and wet.

They try to forget the past, so they swallow the present and future until their world is blurry.

"Out of our reach."

The words are blank, but she will never admit they hurt like _hell_. The only thing stopping her from pushing him off the ledge and into the chlorinated waters below is that he is hurting just as much as she is.

Because he's here, right?

The nightly vigils had started with just her- her and a teapot. She used to spit mouthfuls of the stuff into the pool. It had burned the back of her throat like the thought of him.

But then he had found her there. He is not like the rest, thinking she was all that _sugar and spice and everything nice_. He knows she is not white chocolate; she is dark chocolate, sweet with a bite.

She is silent for a few minutes, drinking her tea. Her eyes never waver, not even when she speaks. The time for crying is over- she has done too much of it and it is time to prove she is growing up. Perhaps her path is a little skewed, but she is coming into her own.

"I like to think he's happy, somewhere out there. Maybe he's riding down the highway on a motorbike. Maybe he's sitting under an umbrella at the beach- you know he hates the sun and burns easily. Maybe… maybe he's _happy_."

He does not say anything in response, just shifting slightly so that his low ponytail slides over his shoulder. It glances over the top of the water, disturbing the ripples.

To tell the truth, she does not know much about him. All she knows is the silent older brother that everyone thinks is perfect when it is all he can do to hold himself together. She knows that, despite everything lost and everything found, he loves his little brother, dammit. He loves _him_ too much, just like her, that all that is left of him is pieces of what he used to be.

No one else sees that.

She wonders how anyone can see him any differently than the way she sees him.

She wants to take a few steps closer to him so that she can show him the way the moonlight hits the water like a sliver of hope. She wants to get as close as possible so she can play pretend until she doesn't know up from down, blue from red, truth from falsehoods. She wants him to hold her closer so she can envelop herself in a cocoon of oblivion.

But her toes are cold.

Never will she ever admit that she has cold_ feet_ because she is daring- do you see the way her toes have slipped into the pool- the way she doesn't care that she's creating self-destruction as her toes turn into a spectacular shade of blue?

This time, he does not even ask; he fills her tea cup again and she just holds it as it warms her hands and steam rises off it in halos.

Her eyes follow the steam into the sky.

She prays he sees it and follows it back home so she can stop loving him in memories.

-the end-

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_Famous Last Words: I really need to write something that is longer than a oneshot & _finish it_. I am so awful in that respect._

_Also, in case anyone missed the note in _this is everything_, I am putting _suite_ on hiatus. If I continue it, I am going to rewrite it, but since school is starting soon & I have so many credits for college, the chance of that is really slim.  
& when you consider AIW's next work will be long (even though whether it'll be an orig!fic or fanfic remains to be seen) & I still have my orig!fic (rushsimone, to anyone familiar with it) to work on...Yeah. I'm sorry to rainbow_spells, icy, les, & all of its other readers, but... it's not likely.  
I do plan on continuing with oneshots though._

_-pandastacia  
_


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